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The Privy Council appeal as a minority safeguard for the
Protestant community of the Irish Free State, 1922-1935
Mohr, Thomas
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2012-10
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Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 63 (3): 365-395
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Queen's University Belfast. School of Law
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THE PRIVY COUNCIL APPEAL AS A MINORITY
SAFEGUARD FOR THE PROTESTANT COMMUNITY
OF THE IRISH FREE STATE, 1922-1935
Thomas Mohr, University College Dublin
This article examines the history of the appeal from the Irish courts to the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council as a purported safeguard for minority rights in the
Irish Free State during the inter-war years. It analyses relevant caselaw in this area
and attempts to illustrate why the Irish appeal became of central importance to the
entire British Commonwealth in this period. Historians tend to ignore the existence of
the Privy Council appeal as a significant aspect of inter-denominational relations in
the early years of the self-governing Irish State. Other commentators have been
content to echo the claims made by the Irish governments of the time to the effect that
the overwhelming majority of Southern Protestants did not want this purported
safeguard of their rights. This article will challenge both of these positions. The
overall objective of this work is not to revive forgotten sectarian controversies but to
provide new data on the nature of inter-denominational relations in the years that
followed the secession of much of the island of Ireland from the United Kingdom.
Introduction
The secession of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom in 1922 left a
considerable number of Irish Protestants on the Southern side of the border. In 1926
there were just over 200,000 Protestants in the Irish Free State out of a total
population of just under 3 million.1 This was a considerable reduction from just over
300,000 Protestants, out of a total population of just over 3 million, who had been
recorded in the 26 counties in the census of 1911. 2 It is difficult to attribute this
1
In this context, the term “Protestants” includes Protestant Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists
and Baptists. The decline in the Protestant population of the 26 counties that would eventually form
the Irish Free State are discussed in Robert E. Kennedy, The Irish: Emigration, Marriage and Fertility
(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1973), pp. 110-138.
2
Ibid.
1
considerable disparity in numbers to anything other than the traumatic nature of the
birth of the Irish Free State. A reduction of one-third in just fifteen years cannot be
explained by considerations of high mortality, low fertility, religious conversions or
even the withdrawal of British security forces in 1922. Kevin O’Higgins, Minister for
Home Affairs, admitted to the Dáil in 1922 that “certain people differing from the
majority in religion, and perhaps also, and I am not sure of that, even in political
outlook, were driven from their homes and from their positions in greater numbers
than I was aware of until quite recently”.3 Despite this dramatic drop in numbers, a
significant number of Southern Protestants remained in the new Irish Free State.
Many Southern Protestants were Unionists and continued to identify with that
tradition after the creation of the new State.
The “abandonment” of a large number of loyal British subjects in the Southern and
Western parts of Ireland remained an emotive issue at Westminster and in the British
media for many years. Yet, it was argued that the minority community had not been
left without important safeguards of their religious and political rights. The necessity
of these safeguards was recognised by the Irish Provisional Government itself. Kevin
O’Higgins recognised the real fears that existed within the minority community and
expressed some sympathy for their position at the break-up of the Union “when the
thing they looked to and felt was a buttress and shelter for them is suddenly swept
away and they find themselves in the awful position of being at the mercy of their
fellow countrymen”.4
Minority Safeguards
On 6 December 1921 British and Irish representatives signed the document popularly
known as “the Treaty” in Ireland.5 The months that followed saw the gradual
crystallisation of the institutions of the new self-governing State in the 26 counties of
the South and West of the island of Ireland. Some of the most important institutions
were designed to ensure that Southern Protestants would have a significant voice in
the political affairs of the new State. The new Irish parliament, or Oireachtas,
3
Dáil Debates, vol. 1, col. 572, 21 September 1922.
Dáil Debates, vol. 1, col. 482, 20 September 1922.
5
Its official name was “Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland”.
4
2
included an upper house of parliament, or Seanad, which was to be elected from a
single electoral area that spanned the entire Irish Free State.6 The lower house, or
Dáil, was to be elected on a proportional representation voting system. Both measures
were designed to ensure that the Protestant population, scattered throughout the
territory of the new State, would be able to elect representatives to the Oireachtas. In
addition, eleventh hour amendments provided that three representatives from Trinity
College Dublin and three from the National University of Ireland would sit in the
Dáil.7 The guarantee of three representatives from Trinity College Dublin, then a
bastion of the minority community, was often perceived to be a concession to
Southern Protestants.8
Article 8 of the Constitution of the Irish Free State provided guarantees of freedom of
conscience and free profession and practice of religion. This article also provided that
no law would be made directly or indirectly to endow any religion. In addition,
Article 8 sought to prevent religious discrimination in the sphere of education.9 In
1922 the Irish Provisional Government had proposed a much more succinct guarantee
of freedom of religion.10 The British government were not satisfied with this and had
insisted on the detailed provisions that eventually appeared in Article 8.
These
provisions had a long provenance and were based on Section 3 of the Government of
Ireland Act 1914 and Section 5(1) of the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Similar
6
Article 32, Constitution of the Irish Free State.
Article 27, Constitution of the Irish Free State.
8
University representation was originally intended for the Seanad and not the Dáil. The original
initiative to move university representation from the upper to the lower house was not based on
arguments relating to safeguards for Southern Protestants. Dáil Debates, vol. 1, col. 1106-1133, 4
October 1922. However, this initiative was soon perceived in this light. This factor certainly
influenced the success of the relevant amendment. Dáil Debates, vol. 1, col. 1151-1157, 4 October
1922; col. 1725, 18 October 1922 and col. 1916-1917, 25 October 1922.
9
Article 8 provided “Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practise of religion are,
subject to public order and morality, guaranteed to every citizen, and no law may be made either
directly or indirectly to endow any religion, or prohibit or restrict the free exercise thereof or give any
preference, or impose any disability on account of religious belief or religious status, or affect
prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the
religious instruction at the school, or make any discrimination as respects State aid between schools
under the management of different religious denominations, or divert from any religious denomination
or any educational institution any of its property except for the purpose of roads, railways, lighting,
water or drainage works or other works of public utility, and on payment of compensation.”
10
Article 9 of the draft Constitution produced by the Provisional Government in May 1922 provided
“Freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion are inviolable rights of every
citizen, and no law may be made either directly or indirectly to endow any religion, or to give any
preference, or to impose any disability on account of belief.” UCD Archives, Kennedy Papers, P4/326,
Document No. 39. This article was broadly similar to Article 8 of Drafts A and B produced by the
Constitution Committee. NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S8953.
7
3
provisions had, in turn, been replicated in Article 16 of the 1921 Treaty.
The
sensitivity of religious matters resulted in a reluctance to depart from this established
formula in 1922. In the 1930s De Valera also recognised the need to tread carefully in
this area.
Almost identical provisions now appear in Article 44 of the current
Constitution of 1937.
The first Seanad, which as a transitional measure had half of its members elected by
the Dáil and the other half nominated by the President of the Executive Council11,
included many prominent Southern Protestants such as W.B. Yeats, Oliver St John
Gogarty, Sir Horace Plunkett, the Earl of Dunraven, James Douglas, the Earl of
Granard, Andrew Jameson, the Earl of Kerry, Alice Stopford Green, the Earl of
Mayo, the Marquess of Headfort, the Earl of Wicklow and Douglas Hyde, who would
go on to serve as President of Ireland between 1938 and 1945. The first chairman or
Cathaoirleach of the Seanad was Lord Glenavy. This list, which is far from
exhaustive, is notable for the large number of titled gentry and for its mixture of
Protestants of Nationalist and Unionist sympathies. The installation of so many
Southern Protestants in the Seanad cannot be entirely attributed to an enlightened
policy by the Irish government. Southern Protestant negotiators secured a guarantee,
during a series of Anglo Irish negotiations in London in the summer of 1922, that a
number of important professional bodies, in which Protestants were well-represented,
would have an input into nominations for the initial membership of the Seanad.12
Nevertheless the composition of the Seanad between 1922 and 1936 does reflect a
perceived need to reconcile an insecure minority community to the new State and its
institutions.
Despite the above concessions, a team of Southern Protestant negotiators emerged
dissatisfied from a series of Anglo Irish talks held in London in June 1922. In
particular, they were unhappy with the institution of the Seanad as an effective
safeguard for the minority community. Lord Midleton, John Henry Bernard (Provost
11
Article 82, Constitution of the Irish Free State.
These included the Chamber of Commerce, the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, the Royal
College of Surgeons in Ireland, the Benchers of the Honorable Society of King’s Inns, Dublin, the
Incorporated Law Society of Ireland and the councils of the County Boroughs of the Irish Free State.
This was the basis of an agreement reached between Arthur Griffith and Lord Middleton, John Henry
Bernard, Lord Donoughmore and Andrew Jameson. PRO-TNA CAB 43/3 S.F.(C) 37, draft
constitution and CAB 43/3 S.F.(C) 42, conference on Ireland, 15 June 1922.
12
4
of Trinity College, Dublin), Lord Donoughmore and Andrew Jameson believed that,
despite the initial award of a generously disproportionate number of senators,
Southern Protestants would only have minority representation in a house of
parliament that would, in time, be popularly elected. The limited powers of the
Seanad were also seen as inhibiting its ability to safeguard the minority community.
The four Southern Protestants made their dissatisfaction clear in a letter that was
published in the newspapers on 16 June, the same day that the text of the draft
Constitution of the Irish Free State was revealed to the public.13
The Privy Council Appeal as a Minority Safeguard
Many of the concessions detailed above are not unfamiliar to Irish constitutional
historians. This article will focus on a much less known legal institution that was seen
as safeguarding the rights of the minority community of the Irish Free State. This was
the appeal from the Irish courts to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. By
the early twentieth century the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, better known
by its shorter but not entirely accurate name of the “Privy Council”, was the final
court of appeal for all the constituent parts of the British Empire with the exception of
the United Kingdom itself.14 When the Irish Free State came into existence as a selfgoverning Dominion of the Empire, it too was obliged to accept this institution.
British insistence on this point ensured that an unhappy Irish government finally
acquiesced to the recognition of an appeal from the Irish Supreme Court to the Privy
Council in Article 66 of the Irish Constitution of 1922. 15 Once this had been
13
Irish Times, 16 June 1922.
Appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council from within the United Kingdom have long
been limited to a few obscure and archaic areas of jurisdiction. These include appeals from certain
ecclesiastical courts and disputes under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, which
prohibits certain groups of people from sitting in the lower house of the British Parliament. The Privy
Council is also empowered to hear appeals from the Court of Admiralty of the Cinque Ports. The last
full sitting of this court occurred in 1914. In the 1990s the Privy Council was empowered to hear
appeals relating to the devolution of powers to legislative assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland. Scotland Act 1998; Government of Wales Act 1998 and Northern Ireland Act 1998. This
jurisdiction has since been transferred to the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which was
established in October 2009 following the enactment of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. See
Thomas Mohr, “‘A British Empire Court’: A Brief Appraisal of the History of the Judicial Committee
of the Privy Council” in Anthony McElligott et al. (eds.), Power in History: From Medieval Ireland to
the Post Modern World - Historical Studies XXVII (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2011), pp. 125-144.
15
Article 66 provided “The decision of the Supreme Court shall in all cases be final and conclusive,
and shall not be reviewed or capable of being reviewed by any other Court, Tribunal or Authority
whatsoever. Provided that nothing in this Constitution shall impair the right of any person to petition
14
5
accepted, the British government attempted to allay the fears of some Southern
Protestants by emphasising that this institution would ensure that a court sitting in
London would act as the final arbiter of their rights. It was held out to the Protestant
community of the Irish Free State as the ultimate safeguard in the event of
discrimination by the dominant majority. This was not a novel argument. The Privy
Council appeal was also seen as safeguarding the rights of other minority groups
throughout the British Empire, such as the French-speaking community in Canada and
the Maoris of New Zealand.16
Successive Irish governments were deeply hostile to the appeal to the Privy Council
from the Irish courts in the 1920s and 1930s. It was seen as a serious limitation on
Irish judicial sovereignty. In addition, the suggestion that the rights of Southern
Protestants required protection by means of recourse to an external court was often
perceived as an affront to the honour of the infant Irish Free State. Irish ministers
asserted with total confidence that the great majority of Southern Protestants did not
actually want this purported safeguard. Patrick McGilligan, Minister for External
Affairs, stated that “The religious minority numbers one in nine of the entire
population, of these, not an infinitesimal proportion desires the retention of the
appeal”.17 W.T. Cosgrave, first President of the Executive Council, wrote “As a
Court there is no support for it here outside of a small section of the minority”.18
Those who did support the appeal were dismissed by McGilligan as a “small clique”,
“a handful of extremists” and even “a small group … who wish to perpetuate religious
strife”.19 Some of these contentions have received the support of legal historians
His Majesty for special leave to appeal from the Supreme Court to His Majesty in Council of the right
of His Majesty to grant such leave.” See Thomas Mohr, “Law without Loyalty: The Abolition of the
Irish Appeal to the Privy Council” (2002) 37 Irish Jurist 187-226.
16
For example, see D.W. Harkness, The Restless Dominion (New York, New York University Press,
1969), pp. 93 and 114 and Megan Richardson, “The Privy Council and New Zealand” 46 (1997)
International and Comparative Law Quarterly 908.
17
UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, draft article “Irish Free State and the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council”, undated. Note: Parts of the McGilligan Papers were reorganised in
2007. All documents in this article listed under P35/166 and P35/167 were originally listed under
P35/196 before these files were re-organised.
18
Draft letter from W.T. Cosgrave to Lord Granard in Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, Volume III,
1926-1932 (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, 2002), p. 688.
19
The Star/An Reult – A National Review, May 1931 vol. 1 no. 9, p. 207. An article in the Times of (7
May 1931, last Monday) reported that McGilligan had referred to Southern Protestants as “bigots”.
McGilligan’s article stated “Except by a few frenzied bigots the view is held that it would be
deplorable if Protestant Irishmen did not take the fullest part in every field of national activity on a
footing of equality with their Catholic fellow-countrymen”. J.W. Dulanty, the Irish High
Commissioner in London, protested “the words ‘frenzied bigots’ unmistakably referred to a small
6
writing in recent decades. For example, David Swinfen concludes that appeal from
the courts of the Irish Free State only enjoyed the support of “a tiny vociferous,
proportion of former Unionists”.20
The Protestant Community of the Irish Free State
The Protestant population of the Irish Free State were often referred to as “Southern
Unionists” or “Southern Loyalists”. It hardly needs to be stated that not all
Protestants living in the Irish Free State would have described themselves in these
terms. For example, Ernest Blythe, a Presbyterian born in Country Antrim, was an
ardent Nationalist who held several ministerial portfolios in the 1920s and 1930s.21
The term “Southern Unionist” would certainly not have an accurate description of the
political views of Mabel FitzGerald (née McConnell) despite her Presbyterian
background. Her son Garrett, who would hold the office of Taoiseach for much of the
1980s, later wrote of how his mother “in a moment of revolutionary fervour, told her
former employer, George Bernard Shaw, that she would bring her eldest son up to
hate England”.22 Her opposition to the 1921 Treaty contrasted with that of her
husband Desmond FitzGerald, a member of the Pro-Treaty government. It should
also be noted that many “Southern Unionists” were not actually Protestants.23 Despite
these complications, the Protestant population of the Irish Free State were often called
“Southern Unionists”, “former Unionists” or often “ex-Unionists”.24 The latter terms
handful of Catholic extremists”. High Commissioner to the Secretary of the Department of External
Affairs, 7 May 1931. The Assistant Editor of the Times responded by pointing to the second heading of
the article that referred to the “Sinister and Disloyal Attempts of a Bigoted Handful to Work Up
Feeling over its (the Privy Council’s) Abolition by Saorstát”. R.M. Barrington to J.W. Dulanty 7 May
1931. It is possible that McGilligan did not write this as no such heading appears in draft versions of
this article. Draft article “Who wants the Privy Council?”. All in UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers,
P35/166. See also the response of the Manchester Guardian 7 May 1931 in condemning the attitude
towards the “very moderate leaders of the Protestant community” in “publicly denouncing them as
bigots and extremists”.
20
David B. Swinfen, Imperial Appeal (Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 1987), p. 124.
21
(1889-1975) Minister for Trade and Commerce, First and Second Dáil 1919-1922; Minister for Local
Government 1922-1923; Minister for Finance 1923-1932 and Vice-President of the Executive Council
1927-1932.
22
Garret FitzGerald, Ireland in the World (Dublin, Liberties Press, 2005) p. 189.
23
A detailed account of the Catholic Unionist tradition is provided in John Biggs-Davison and George
Chowdharay-Best, The Cross of Saint Patrick: The Catholic Unionist Tradition in Ireland
(Buckinghamshire, Kensal Press, 1984).
24
E.g. TNA-PRO, CAB 32/56 E(I.R.26) 4th Meeting, 2 November 1926, UCD Archives, McGilligan
Papers, P35B/108 and NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S4285B, transcript of radio broadcast of 9
November 1930. The term was sometimes used by Southern Protestant sources e.g. Irish Times, 13
February 1932. It is still occasionally used today e.g. L. Weeks, “We Don’t Like (to) Party. A
7
must have been offensive to many people whose political preferences had not
necessarily been altered by the creation of the Irish Free State. One might imagine the
reaction of the minority community of Northern Ireland to being described as “exNationalists”. The term “Southern Protestants” is not without its own difficulties
based on considerations of geography and the movements of people. Nevertheless,
this article will use the term “Southern Protestants” on the basis that it is preferable to
all alternatives, as a useful shorthand description of the Protestants living in or native
to the 26 counties of the island of Ireland that would eventually form the territory of
the Irish Free State
The Irish Appeal to the Privy Council
The origins of the appeal lie in Articles 1 and 2 of the “Treaty” or “Articles of
Agreement” signed in London in 1921. These provisions ensured that the Irish Free
State came into existence as a Dominion of the British Empire.25 Article 2 ensured
that the Irish Free State was to hold the same constitutional status within the Empire
in certain key areas as was enjoyed by the Dominion of Canada. The British
government led by David Lloyd George considered the institution of the Privy
Council appeal to be essential in ensuring that the new Irish Free State was perceived
as a British Dominion. They also saw it as a means of safeguarding the rights of the
Southern Protestant community in addition to providing a mechanism for maintaining
the integrity of the settlement imposed by the 1921 Treaty.26 The British insisted that,
although the appeal to the Privy Council was not explicitly mentioned in the text of
the Treaty, acceptance of the appeal was implicit in the overall acceptance of
Dominion status.27 The Irish were far from happy with this position and made a
determined effort in bilateral negotiations to exclude the appeal from the text of the
Typology of Independents in Irish Political Life, 1922–2007” 24:1 (2009) Irish Political Studies 1 at
14.
25
The use of a capital “D” when referring to the “British Dominions” was required by the British
government in order to avoid confusion with the wider term “His Majesty’s dominions” which referred
to the British Empire as a whole. See The National Archives – Public Records Office (TNA-PRO) HO
45/20030. This article will follow this convention.
26
For example, see TNA-PRO, CAB 43/1 SFB 21, Meeting between Representatives of the Southern
Unionists and the British Representatives on the Conference on Ireland, 7 December 1921 and TNAPRO, CO 739/7/47027, Curtis to Churchill, 20 September 1922.
27
TNA-PRO, CAB 43/7, 22/N/162, draft Irish Constitution, 27 May 1922.
8
Constitution. This position had to be abandoned in the face of serious pressure from
the British government.28
Despite this unfortunate beginning, the Privy Council appeal hardly disturbed the
waters in the first few years of the existence of the Irish Free State. The Privy
Council heard three Irish petitions for leave to appeal in 1923.29 The Irish
government was relieved and reassured when all three were refused leave to appeal.30
This period of relative calm was obliterated in 1926 when the Privy Council granted
leave to appeal in the case of Lynham v. Butler.31 The case concerned the
interpretation of certain provisions of the Irish Land Act 1923. This was seen as
matter of purely domestic significance and, as far as the Irish were concerned, this
was not a matter that should have been the subject of an appeal to the Privy Council.
The grant of leave to appeal revived earlier fears that the Privy Council appeal might
be used by the British to meddle in the internal affairs of the Irish Free State.32 A new
statute known as the Land Act 1926 was rushed through the Oireachtas that confirmed
the interpretation of the Land Act 1923 given by the Irish Supreme Court during its
consideration of the issues involved in Lynham v. Butler.33 This extraordinary
measure effectively blocked any further consideration of this case by the Privy
Council.
Irish perceptions of the Privy Council appeal sunk even further when the Irish
government disputed two judgments concerning the compensation payable to civil
servants who had been transferred from Great Britain to Ireland before 1922.34 The
28
See Thomas Mohr “Law without Loyalty – The Abolition of the Irish Appeal to the Privy Council”
(2002) 37 Irish Jurist 187.
29
These three petitions were Alexander E. Hull and Co. v Mary A. E. M'Kenna, The “Freeman's
Journal” Limited v. Erik Fernstrom and The “Freeman's Journal” Limited v. Follum Traesliberi. All
are reported at [1926] I.R. 402.
30
Hugh Kennedy, then Attorney General of the Irish Free State wrote “if they had been so dishonestly
minded, the British side could have eaten into our rights very substantially”. UCD Archives, Kennedy
Papers, P4/516, Hugh Kennedy to W.T. Cosgrave, 30 July 1923.
31
[1925] 2 I.R. 82 (High Court) [1925] 2 I.R. 82 (Supreme Court).
32
For example, UCD Archives, Kennedy Papers, P4/516, Hugh Kennedy to W.T. Cosgrave, 30 July
1923.
33
A.B. Keith claimed that he had anticipated the use of such measures as the Land Act 1926 in advice
given to Darrell Figgis during the drafting of the Irish Constitution. A.B. Keith “Notes on Imperial
Constitutional Law” (1926) 8 Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law 286-7.
34
Wigg and Cochrane v The Attorney General of the Irish Free State [1927] I.R. 285; In the Matter of
the Reference as to the Tribunal under Article 12 of the Schedule appended to the Irish Free State
Agreement Act 1922 Cmd. 2214.
9
Irish insisted that the Privy Council had made fundamental errors in calculating the
level of compensation payable to these persons.35 This time the Irish protest took the
form of refusing to pay the awards fixed by the Privy Council.36 In short, the Irish
executive refused to enforce the decisions of a court that was recognised by the
provisions of the Irish Constitution.
The next Irish appeal heard by the Privy Council was Performing Right Society v.
Bray Urban District Council.37 This case concerned whether the Copyright Act
1911, a British Imperial statute, applied to the Irish Free State. The Supreme Court
held that it did not while the Privy Council held that it did.38 The decision of the
Privy Council was more desirable from a practical perspective since it prevented the
creation of a significant gap in the protection of copyright in the Irish Free State.
Unfortunately, the deterioration of relations caused by previous appeals ensured that
the Irish government refused to accept this judgment.39 Instead, the Oireachtas
enacted special legislation, the Copyright (Preservation) Act 1929 that attempted to
fill the lacunae in Irish copyright law created by the decision of the Irish Supreme
Court.40
By the end of the 1920s the Irish government made no secret of its desire to abolish
the appeal and spared no effort to achieve this goal. This objective was pursued at
successive Imperial Conferences in the 1920s and 1930s. The Privy Council heard
one more Irish case before the abolition of the appeal was placed beyond dispute.
This was Moore v. Attorney General, a case that will be examined at a later stage in
this article.41
It is readily apparent from this short but ignoble history that the foundations of the
hostility of the Irish government towards the appeal centred on fears of diminution of
sovereignty. Yet, the assertion that the appeal acted as a safeguard for Southern
35
R.F.V. Heuston, Lives of the Lord Chancellors 1885-1940 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 441.
Irish Times, 15 November 1928 and Hansard, House of Lords, vol. 70, col. 819-20, 25 April 1928.
37
[1928] I.R. 512.
38
[1928] I.R. 512 (Supreme Court) and [1930] I.R. 509 (Privy Council).
39
See Thomas Mohr “Law without Loyalty – The Abolition of the Irish Appeal to the Privy Council”
(2002) 37 Irish Jurist 187.
40
The Copyright (Preservation) Act 1929
41
[1935] I.R. 472 and [1935] A.C. 484
36
10
Protestants was also a significant cause of friction. Claims that such safeguards were
necessary were seen as attempts to stir up dormant sectarian feelings.42 The antipathy
of the Irish government towards the assertion that the Privy Council appeal acted as a
minority safeguard was heightened by the perception that this safeguard had been
introduced by means of subterfuge.
The Irish Appeal to the Privy Council as a Minority Safeguard
In 1930 the Irish government ordered an extensive search of its files on the
negotiations that led to the signing of the 1921 Treaty in order to discover any
discussions on the appeal to the Privy Council as a minority safeguard.43 The failure
to find any discussions on this issue buttressed a perception that this purported
safeguard had been invented in the years that followed 1921 as a device for
obstructing the desire of the Irish governments to abolish the appeal.44
If the Irish government had examined pre-1921 material they might have found
evidence that challenged their belief that the use of the Privy Council appeal as a
minority safeguard had only been made after the signature of the Treaty. The Bills
and Acts relating to Irish Home Rule made it clear that the Privy Council had been
intended to act as the arbiter of these settlements in the event of dispute.45 In this
42
For example, The Star, May 1931, p. 207 and UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, draft
article “Who wants the Privy Council?”.
43
NAI, Department of the Taoiseach S4285A, Michael McDunphy to W.T. Cosgrave, 8 November
1930 and Michael McDunphy to Diarmuid O’Hegarty, 8 November 1930.
44
This formed the basis for a line of argument that was used in Anglo Irish negotiations and at the
Imperial Conferences of the 1920s and 1930s. For example, see TNA-PRO CAB 32/79 PM(30)18
Appendix, meeting of prime ministers and heads of delegations, 5 November 1930 and NAI
Department of the Taoiseach S4285A, memorandum for the Imperial Conference of 1930, undated.
45
Section 25 of the Irish Government Bill, 1886, better known as the first Home Rule Bill, would have
empowered the Judicial Committee to decide whether legislation passed by the proposed Irish
Parliament was intra vires. In other matters, the appeal from the Irish courts to the House of Lords
would have remained intact. Sections 25 and 36 of the Irish Government Bill, 1886.
http://multitext.ucc.ie/d/Home_Rule_Bill_1886 The Irish Government Bill, 1893 and the Government
of Ireland Act 1914 would have completely replaced the jurisdiction of the House of Lords with that of
the Privy Council. They also contained provisions that would have allowed for the “speedy
determination” by the Judicial Committee of such constitutional questions as the validity of laws
passed by the Irish legislature. Sections 28 and 29 of the Government of Ireland Act 1914 were
virtually identical to Sections 22 and 23 of the Irish Government Bill, 1893. Section 30 of the 1914
Act contained additional provisions that were not found in the 1893 Bill. For the full text of the 1893
Bill see “The Home Rule Bill, 1893”, Pall Mall Gazette Extra, no. 67, 1893. The Government of
Ireland Act 1920 retained the appeal to the House of Lords but gave special jurisdiction to the Privy
11
context, the Privy Council appeal had long been promoted as a safeguard for Irish
Protestants living under a Home Rule Parliament.46 In addition, it was well known
that the Privy Council appeal was perceived to be a minority safeguard in other parts
of the Empire, most notably by the French-speakers of Canada.
The potential offered by the Privy Council appeal to safeguard the rights of Southern
Protestants gained greater importance as the possibility of total secession of parts of
Ireland from the United Kingdom became a real possibility. Southern Protestant
representatives discussed this safeguard with the British government before and
immediately after the signature of the 1921 Treaty. The Church of Ireland
Archbishop of Dublin47 raised the Privy Council appeal in correspondence with Lloyd
George in October 1921.48 The day after the Treaty was signed Lloyd George met a
delegation of Southern Protestants, consisting of Lord Midleton, Lord Desart, John
Henry Bernard and Andrew Jameson. The British prime minister used the Privy
Council appeal to counter Midleton’s complaint that the terms of the Treaty offered
nothing to Southern Protestants.49 Although this safeguard was not mentioned in the
text of the Treaty, Lloyd George revealed the intention of the British government to
use the constitutional link with Canada in Article 2 of the Treaty to secure an appeal
to the Privy Council from the Irish courts.50 The existence of an appeal to the Privy
Council from the Canadian courts ensured that the same position would have to apply
to the Irish Free State.
The complaints raised by Irish governments in the 1920s and 1930s to the effect that
the British delegation did not raise this potential safeguard with their Irish
counterparts during the Treaty negotiations might well have been justified. It was
certainly not in the interests of the British government to raise this difficult issue at
Council to decide certain constitutional questions. Sections 49 to 53 of the Government of Ireland Act
1920.
46
For example see Sir John MacDonell, “Constitutional Limitations upon the Powers of the Irish
Legislature and the Protection of Minorities” in J.H. Morgan (ed.) The New Irish Constitution (London,
Hodder and Stoughton, 1912), p. 110
47
John Allen FitzGerald Gregg, popularly known as “John Dublin”, (1873-1961) Archbishop of
Dublin and Glendalough (1920-1939), Archbishop of Armagh (1939-1959).
48
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, Archbishop of Dublin to Prime Minister, 27 September 1930.
49
TNA-PRO, CAB 43/1 SFB 21, Meeting between Representatives of the Southern Unionists and the
British Representatives on the Conference on Ireland, 7 December 1921.
50
TNA-PRO, CAB 43/1 SFB 21, Meeting between Representatives of the Southern Unionists and the
British Representatives on the Conference on Ireland, 7 December 1921.
12
this juncture.51 The British did raise the Privy Council appeal in public after the
Treaty was safely signed. The appeal was discussed in some detail during the
negotiations on the provisions of the draft Irish Constitution that took place in the
summer of 1922. Yet, the British still refrained from emphasising the potential of the
appeal to offer minority safeguards to the Protestant population of the embryonic Irish
Free State. It is unlikely that such an argument would have impressed the Irish
representatives and, in any case, the British were anxious to play down the
significance of the Privy Council appeal at this point. The negotiating stance adopted
by the British government on the Privy Council appeal focused on the constitutional
link with Canada established by Article 2 of the 1921 Treaty. The Irish were under the
impression that appeals from the Irish courts would be rare and exceptional events.52
Emphasis on the use of the appeal as the guarantor of the rights of Southern
Protestants would have undermined this expectation. It would also have heightened
Irish fears as to the potential offered by appeal to meddle in the internal affairs of the
Irish Free State. The Irish representatives at these negotiations paid little heed to
Home Rule antecedents or to perceptions of the appeal by minorities in other parts of
the Empire. The absence of detailed discussions on the use of the Privy Council
appeal as a minority safeguard was clearly advantageous to the British negotiating
position in 1921 and 1922. Yet, it had unfortunate consequences in the longer term.
When the minority safeguard argument was raised in the years that followed the Irish
government treated it as if it had fallen from a clear blue sky.
Rejection of the minority safeguard argument became more vociferous as the attitude
of the Irish government hardened towards the Privy Council in the aftermath of the
dispute surrounding Lynham v. Butler and the appeals concerning transferred civil
servants. On 9 November 1930 Patrick McGilligan made a radio broadcast to the
United States of America that consisted, for the most part, of an emotive diatribe
against the Privy Council. The appeal was presented as “the last element of British
control in Ireland”. McGilligan was particularly eager to refute the argument that the
appeal was of any utility as a minority safeguard. According to McGilligan, “Irish
51
TNA-PRO, CO 532/257, Lionel Curtis to Sir James Masterson Smith, 8 October and 1 November
1923.
52
For example, Kevin O’Higgins went so far as to assert that leave to appeal would be limited to cases
that involved “international issues of the first importance”. Dáil Debates, vol. 1, col. 1404, 10 October
1922. See also TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, Dominions Secretary to Lord Chancellor, 17 February 1926.
13
Catholics have never been guilty of religious intolerance”. This sweeping statement
did not prevent Gilligan from describing Southern Protestants as “people whose
ancestors had been responsible for a regime of religious bigotry and intolerance in
Ireland”. He also associated them with “the remnants of a class which had lived on
the toil of Irish peasants working on lands which centuries ago had been torn from the
Irish people”.53
Although the Irish government was deeply hostile to perceptions of the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council as the champion of the minority community in the
Irish Free State, it had to recognise that this contention created a serious obstacle to
the abolition of the appeal. Complaints made by Irish ministers that this issue had not
been examined in detail during the Anglo Irish negotiations of 1921 and 1922 were
not sufficient to remove this issue from the political agenda in the years that followed.
These considerations ensured that the Irish government adopted four additional
approaches in its efforts to undermine the image of the Privy Council as the ultimate
safeguard for the rights of Southern Protestants.
Challenging the Appeal I: Inefficacy
The first approach used by the Irish government was to stress the inefficacy of the
appeal to serve as a minority safeguard. It could not be denied that the decisions of
this court had been thwarted on at least four separate occasions in the 1920s. The
appeal in Lynham v. Butler and the decision in Performing Right Society v. Bray
Urban District Council were blocked by special legislation.54 The decisions in the
two cases concerning the transferred civil servants had simply been ignored until the
British government brokered a successful compromise.55 Patrick McGilligan told
delegates to the Imperial Conference of 1930 that the Oireachtas could ensure “that
53
NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S4285B, transcript of radio broadcast of 9 November 1930.
The Land Act 1926 prevented the appeal in Lynham v. Butler [1925] 2 I.R. 82 (High Court) [1925] 2
I.R. 82 (Supreme Court) from going ahead while the Copyright (Preservation) Act 1929 ensured that
the Privy Council could do no more than award costs in Performing Right Society v. Bray Urban
District Council [1930] I.R. 509.
55
The difference between the amount of compensation for the transferred civil servants calculated on
the basis of the Privy Council decisions and the amount calculated by the Irish Supreme Court was
recouped by the British government. This solution was cemented by the enactment of parallel
legislation, Civil Service (Transferred Officers) Compensation Act 1929 (Dublin) and the Irish Free
State (Confirmation of Agreement) Act 1929 (Westminster).
54
14
any interpretation contrary to the decision of the Irish courts could be nullified”.56
The success of the Irish government in blocking or ignoring appeals allowed one Irish
commentator, Hector Hughes in a monograph on Judicial Autonomy in the
Dominions, to insist that the Privy Council appeal was no more than a “paper
safeguard” for minorities.57 Hughes insisted that an oppressive majority community
could never be forced to accept the decisions of the Privy Council. He concluded that
the Privy Council had “no way – short of physical force, which even is not available
to it – of enforcing its decisions”.58 The difficulty with this argument is that it could
be raised in relation to any court of law. It was an argument that rested on assertions
of power on the part of the majority community rather than on any overriding moral
consideration. Those who argued that the decisions of the Privy Council had been
made ineffective in the past could not ignore the inconsistency with respect for rule of
law that characterised many of these actions.59
If anything, these considerations
seemed to bolster, rather than undermine, arguments that minority safeguards were
indeed necessary. Nevertheless, as will become apparent, this “lack of efficacy”
argument did convince a number of prominent Southern Protestants to withdraw their
support for the continuance of the Irish appeal to the Privy Council.
Challenging the Appeal II: Lack of Necessity
More constructive attempts at undermining the image of the Privy Council as the
champion of Southern Protestants focused on the assertion that there was no real
necessity for a minority safeguard of this nature. Kevin O’Higgins told the Imperial
Conference of 1926 that the “ex-Unionists” were among the “best citizens” the Irish
56
TNA-PRO CAB 32/88 E(I.R.)(30) 8th meeting, 21 October 1930. See also, NAI, Department of the
Taoiseach S4285A, memorandum for the Imperial Conference of 1930, undated.
57
Hector Hughes, National Sovereignty and Judicial Autonomy in the British Commonwealth of Nations
(London, P.S. King, 1931), p. 109.
58
Ibid at p. 108.
59
It should be recalled that the attempts to obstruct the decisions of the Privy Council were not the only
extraordinary legal measures being taken at this time. Other examples included the Public Safety Act
1927, which explicitly overrode the provisions of the Constitution, the Constitution (Amendment No.
16) Act 1929, which could be seen as fatally undermining the intention that constitutional amendments
should be approved by means of referenda after the expiry of an 8 year transitional period and the
Constitution (Amendment No. 17) Act 1931, which created a new system of military courts with
sweeping powers. In this context, the use of retrospective legislation to thwart the jurisdiction of a
court or, in other cases, the simple refusal to enforce its directions could be seen as evidence of a
serious deterioration in respect for the integrity of law in the Irish Free State.
15
Free State had”.60 A memorandum written for the Imperial Conference of 1930
stressed that Southern Protestants “have never suffered discrimination or injustice.
They have been accepted in the fullest sense as fellow-citizens, they have with the
exception of a negligible number of irreconcilables accepted the position
themselves”.61 It was also emphasised that Southern Protestants were well
represented in the ranks of the judiciary of the Irish Free State. 62
The Protestant community of the Irish Free State could not compare their position to
the level of discrimination endured by the Catholic community in Northern Ireland in
the inter-war years and beyond. Yet this did not mean that sectarian tensions were
absent from the 26 counties. Protestant members of the Oireachtas had to endure jibes
from Fianna Fáil TDs and the Irish Press, which identified them with freemasonry
and British imperialism and as the British garrison in Ireland. Sectarian attacks had
occurred during the Anglo Irish conflict of 1919 to 1921.63 The burning of Protestant
churches in the 1930s as reprisals for attacks against Catholics in Northern Ireland and
the Fethard-on-Sea boycott in the late 1950s illustrate that the creation of the selfgoverning Irish State had not eliminated these tensions.64
One of the most notorious incidents of this nature during the lifetime of the Irish Free
State itself was the rancorous dispute fuelled by the appointment of Letitia DunbarHarrison, a Protestant graduate of Trinity College Dublin, as a librarian in Co. Mayo.
The Local Appointments Commission had recommended Harrison for the post in
1930. Nevertheless, the Mayo Library Committee refused to endorse the
60
TNA-PRO, CAB 32/56 E(I.R.26) 4th Meeting, 2 November 1926.
NAI, Department of the Taoiseach S4285A, memorandum for the Imperial Conference of 1930,
undated.
62
A draft speech on the Privy Council written by Eamon de Valera in 1933 stressed that one out of
three members of the Supreme Court and four out of six members of the High Court were Protestants.
NAI, Department of Foreign Affairs, file 3/1, draft speech on “Abolition of Appeals to the Privy
Council”, undated 1933. At the time of writing of this article the first Protestant, Susan Denham, has
just been appointed as Chief Justice of the Irish Supreme Court.
63
See Peter Hart “The Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland” Richard English and
Graham Walker (eds.) Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture
(Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996), pp. 81-98.
64
Kurt Bowen, Protestants in a Catholic State – Ireland’s Privileged Minority (Kingston and Montreal,
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983), p. 64 and Tim Fanning, The Fethard-on-Sea Boycott (Cork,
Collins, 2010). See also Heather K. Crawford, Outside the Glow: Protestants and Irishness in
Independent Ireland (Dublin, University College Dublin Press, 2010) and Marianne Elliott, When God
Took Sides: Religion and Identity in Ireland - Unfinished History (Oxford, Oxford University Press,
2009).
61
16
appointment. This body objected to the appointment on two grounds. First, it was
noted that she had no qualifications in the Irish language. This objection ignored
Harrison’s entitlement to a period of three years in which to obtain such a
qualification. The second objection was that a Protestant was not a suitable person to
supervise the reading of a population that was overwhelmingly Catholic. Richard
Mulcahy, Minister for Local Government, responded by suspending Mayo County
Council when it threw its support behind the library committee. Harrison was duly
appointed to the position, although pragmatic considerations ensured her rapid
promotion and transfer to a more congenial post in the library of the Department of
Defence in Dublin. The robust response of the Irish government transformed a shortterm disaster into a major publicity coup for the Irish Free State. The dispute was
widely reported in the international press, which ensured that the Irish government
received widespread praise for its strong stance against religious intolerance.65
The Dunbar-Harrison incident is significant because the Irish government made
extensive use of it to support their case that the Protestant minority did not require
external intervention in order to uphold their rights.66 Yet this dispute was not an
untrammelled propaganda victory for the Irish Free State as a tolerant society. Eamon
de Valera tarnished this image by his robust support for Mayo County Council. He
told the Dáil “I say that if I had a vote on a local body, and there were two qualified
people who had to deal with a Catholic community, and if one was a Catholic and
another a Protestant, I would unhesitatingly vote for the Catholic”.67
One of the most important methods of attacking the need for the appeal, as a minority
safeguard, was to argue that none of the Irish cases heard by the Privy Council had ever
involved any question of religion.68 Some Southern Protestants did argue that official
efforts to prevent the availability of divorce constituted religious discrimination and
violated Article 8 of the Constitution, but these complaints never crystallised into a legal
65
E.g. (1931) 21 Round Table 404.
For example see UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35B/115, Walshe to McGilligan, undated;
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, note by Sir H. Batterbee and Mr. Machtig, 27 February 1931 and (1931) 21
Round Table 404.
67
Dáil Debates, vol. 39, col. 517, 17 June 1931.
68
For example, Hector Hughes, National Sovereignty and Judicial Autonomy in the British
Commonwealth of Nations (London, P.S. King, 1931) pp. 107-9.
66
17
challenge.69 Nevertheless, those who emphasised the lack of religious content in any of
the Irish appeals to the Privy Council failed to consider that perceived attacks on the
rights of the minority community need not have been directly concerned with matters of
religion. The transferred civil servants involved in Wigg and Cochrane v. Attorney
General and the special reference that followed were, accurately or otherwise, perceived
to be Protestants and Unionists by their supporters.70 The appellants in Moore v.
Attorney General were Protestants from Donegal and Derry. The case involved a
challenge to their exclusive fishing rights on the tidal estuary of the river Erne by a
number of fishermen. The description of the owners of these property rights as
“foreigners” by those who instigated the legal action reflects an unpleasant sectarian
aspect to this dispute.71
It is important not to place disproportionate emphasis on isolated incidents such as the
Dunbar-Harrison dispute or the events surrounding Moore v. Attorney General when
examining the position of the Southern Protestant community as a whole during the
lifetime of the Irish Free State. The short span of time since the conclusion of the
bloody conflict that had preceded the creation of the Irish Free State is far more
important in explaining the sense of vulnerability that persisted among many Southern
Protestants. The Church of Ireland Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, Charles
Frederick D’Arcy and John Allen FitzGerald Gregg, emphasised that “memories in
Ireland are long” in a letter to The Times supporting the retention of the Privy Council
appeal.72 A British memorandum written in 1926, in response to calls by the Irish
government to abolish the Privy Council appeal, made clear that “the bitterness of the
past cannot be wiped out in three years, and there is still a substantial minority in the
Free State who would regard the abolition of the right to petition for special leave to
appeal to His Majesty in Council as a betrayal at the hands of the British
Government”.73
Challenging the Appeal III: Absence of Protestant Support
69
Irish Times, 23 February 1925 and Dáil Debates, vol. 10, c. 158-182, 11 February 1925.
E.g. Hansard, House of Lords, vol. 83, col. 232-3, 1 December 1931.
71
Donegal Democrat 12 August 1933.
72
The Times, 7 November 1930.
73
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/3465, Imperial Conference 1926: Appeals to the King in Council, 1 November
1926.
70
18
A third approach in challenging the claim that the Privy Council provided a minority
safeguard focused on the Southern Protestant community itself. Irish officials were
anxious to dismiss claims that Southern Protestants valued the Privy Council appeal
as a safeguard of their rights and freedoms. Kevin O’Higgins used this approach to
deny the reality of this minority safeguard at the Imperial Conference of 1926 and
successive Irish governments repeated it throughout the 1920s and 1930s.74
O’Higgins went so far as to claim that the if a plebiscite were taken on the Privy
Council appeal the only persons who would be found to support it in the Irish Free
State would be members of the Irish Bar. Members of the legal profession were seen
as having an obvious interest in maintaining what the Irish government characterised
as a “rich man’s appeal”.75 Patrick McGilligan believed that only a small clique of
Southern Protestants supported the appeal and equated this position to a desire to
retain class privileges.76
The Irish government was particularly keen to point to prominent Southern
Protestants who had little time for the Privy Council appeal.77 Ernest Blythe was
among the most obdurate opponents of the Privy Council appeal within the Irish
government.78 In 1930 Senator James Douglas, a Quaker who had sat on the
committee that created the early drafts of the 1922 Constitution, wrote a letter to the
press in order to refute claims made by other Southern Protestants as to value of the
appeal as a minority safeguard.79 Douglas considered that it was necessary for
Southern Protestants to reject the appeal in order to prove their loyalty to the new
State:
74
TNA-PRO, CAB 32/56 E(I.R.26) 4th Meeting, 2 November 1926.
Ibid. and TNA-PRO, CAB 43/3 SFC 40 Griffith to Lloyd George, 2 June 1922.
76
The Star, May 1931, p. 207 and UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, draft article “Who
wants the Privy Council?”.
77
The Irish government listed Mr. Justice FitzGibbon, a Protestant judge who formed one of the three
members of the Irish Supreme Court, among those who opposed the Irish appeal to the Privy Council.
NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S4285A, memorandum of the Imperial Conference of 1930,
undated. These claims rest on purported statements made by FitzGibbon during the debates on the
Constitution of the Irish Free State in 1922. Analysis of his contributions to these discussions does not
evince any obvious hostility to the Privy Council appeal. For example, see Dáil Debates, vol. 1, col.
1406-7, 10 October 1922.
78
For example, see Dáil Debates, vol. 32, col. 667-8, 31 October 1929.
79
Douglas’ intervention was a response to the letter to the press written by the Church of Ireland
Archbishops during the Imperial Conference of 1930. This letter was published in The Times, 7
November 1930.
75
19
“We, non-Catholics, in the Saorstát [Free State] cannot serve two masters, for
else we will hold to one and despise the other. Loyal acceptance of the new
order of things means trusting the majority to safeguard the rights of the
minority. If the majority cannot be trusted, no constitutional provision however
carefully worded – no political interference by an outside authority – no appeals
to an outside Court will be of any avail whatever.”80
Challenging the Appeal IV: A Tool of External Interference
Irish governments in the 1920s and 1930s were convinced that the minority safeguard
argument was a convenient ruse employed by persons outside the 26 counties, who
were hostile to the self-governing Irish State, to ensure the retention of the Privy
Council appeal. John A. Costello told the Imperial Conference of 1930 that, as far as
he was aware, “no one in Ireland had ever put forward the argument that the
“Loyalists” [of the Irish Free State] should continue to receive the protection offered
afforded by the appeal to the Judicial Committee: that was an argument only put
forward in England”.81
Irish Nationalists had long accused British governments of deliberately fostering
artificial sectarian divisions in Ireland.82 However Nationalist suspicions as to the
objectivity of the Privy Council also had their root in the absence of a clear separation
of powers in key British institutions. The Lord Chancellor heard Privy Council
appeals but also sat in the House of Lords and had a seat in the British cabinet.83 Irish
commentators, including members of the Irish government itself, often questioned the
independence of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council vis-à-vis the British
government. John A. Costello wrote that the Judicial Committee had a “political
tinge” and supported this by noting that it was “formed of people who are at one and
the same time Judges and Politicians”.84 Patrick McGilligan asked his radio audience
80
Sunday Independent, 9 November 1930. See also (1931) 82 Round Table 402.
TNA-PRO CAB 32/88 E(I.R.)(30) 8th meeting, 21 October 1930.
82
For example, see the 1916 Proclamation and UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, draft
article “Who wants the Privy Council?”.
83
The office of Lord Chancellor was finally reformed by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.
84
UCD Archives, Costello Papers, P190/94, notes on the memorandum prepared for the Imperial
Conference of 1926 on appeals to the Privy Council, undated.
81
20
in 1930 “Are not the British government and parliament still in a position to interfere
in Irish affairs through this purely British Court, the majority of whose judges have
most violently opposed the liberation of the Irish people”?85 These suspicions filtered
down to opinion pieces in Irish periodicals in which the Privy Council was described
as the “pocket tribunal of the English political party in power”.86 The Irish appeal to
the Privy Council was dogged by conspiracy theories throughout its lifetime. One
example was the rumour that the Judicial Committee had granted leave to appeal in
Lynham v. Butler on the erroneous assumption that the case would affect a
considerable number of Anglo-Irish landlords.87
Fears of clandestine subversion received public expression in Patrick McGilligan’s
radio broadcast of 1930. McGilligan warned his listeners of sinister elements who
wished to use the Privy Council appeal “as a means of keeping Ireland a pawn in
British party politics and of preventing Irish ex-Unionists from becoming an
inseparable element of the Irish nation”. According to McGilligan attempts were
being made through “a well-subsidised Press and other means to maintain a feeling of
discontent amongst the small ex-Unionist population of the Irish Free State”. Behind
it all were “enemies of the Irish people” who were “violently opposed to the Treaty,
and if they were strong enough to-day they would reduce them to subjection once
more”.88 In a subsequent newspaper article McGilligan characterised support for the
retention of the appeal as a “sinister and disloyal campaign”. He asked his readers “Is
it the desire of the Protestant population of our country to become part of the warp
and woof of the Irish nation?” McGilligan took the controversy over the appeal to a
new level when he concluded “Is there not at the back of the demand the desire that
the appeal to the Privy Council might one day be used as an indirect means for
bringing the British back to Ireland?”89
The “Cleaning of the Slate” Negotiations
85
UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35B/108, radio broadcast, 9 November 1930.
Donal McEgan, “John Bull's Privy Council” (1933) 23 The Catholic Bulletin 739.
87
Hector Hughes, National Sovereignty and Judicial Autonomy in the British Commonwealth of
Nations (London, P.S. King, 1931) p. 99.
88
UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35B/108 and NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S4285B,
transcript of radio broadcast of 9 November 1930.
89
The Star, May 1931, p. 207 and UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, draft article “Who
wants the Privy Council?”.
86
21
Claims that the Privy Council appeal offered a vital safeguard to Irish Protestants
received significant attention outside Ireland. The issue was raised at successive
Imperial Conferences in the 1920s and 1930s. The protection of the Protestants of the
Irish Free State also encroached into the debates that preceded the enactment of the
Statute of Westminster. The Imperial Conference of 1926 had decided that changes
should not be made to the Privy Council appeal in any one Dominion without prior
consultation and discussion with other members of the Commonwealth.90 For their
part, the Irish government sought to win Dominion support for their position on the
appeal in order to place pressure on their British counterparts. Arguments based on
the success of the Irish government in thwarting Privy Council appeals and on fears of
external subversion and had little chance of persuading the Dominions to agree to
limitation or total abolition of Irish appeals to the Privy Council. The argument that
safeguards for Irish Protestants were not necessary was heavily intertwined with the
claim that the minority community of the Irish Free State did not actually desire an
appeal to an external tribunal. This offered the most promising approach to achieving
external agreement for abolition of the appeal. Although this argument had been
raised without success during the Imperial Conferences of 1926 and 1930, the Irish
government had good reason to believe that a series of Anglo Irish negotiations
initiated in 1931 held out greater promise of success.
In 1931 the minority Labour government in London was pre-occupied with the task of
ensuring that the Statute of Westminster Bill passed through Parliament without
substantial amendment. This historic piece of legislation was the response to
demands for greater autonomy from some of the self-governing Dominions of the
Empire, such as Canada, South Africa and the Irish Free State.91 The original Bill
was based on a wording that had finally been agreed at the Imperial Conference of
90
Cmd. 2768, pp. 19-20. This reflected the views of the New Zealand delegation to the 1926
Conference which refused to admit that any one Dominion had the right to abolish the Privy Council
appeal without the consent of the others. TNA-PRO, CAB 32/56 E(IR-26) 4th Meeting, 2 November
1926.
91
Australia only adopted the operative provisions when its parliament passed the Statute of
Westminster Adoption Act 1942. New Zealand finally adopted the operative provisions of the Statute
of Westminster in conjunction with the abolition of its upper house in 1947. The New Zealand
parliament passed the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1947 and the New Zealand Constitution
(Request and Consent) Act 1947 received the royal assent on 10 December 1947. The latter measure
was supplemented by the New Zealand Constitution (Amendment) Act 1947 passed at Westminster.
22
1930. Amending the agreed text would require reopening negotiations with the
Dominions. This would endanger the survival of the Statute of Westminster and of
the British government itself.
The most serious threat to the agreed text concerned the application of the proposed
Statute of Westminster to the Irish Free State. Determined efforts were made within
the British parliament to ensure that the greater autonomy offered by the Statute of
Westminster could not be used to abolish the Irish appeal to the Privy Council. The
number of Irish Protestants at Westminster was relatively small. Yet, they
represented a body of opinion that could never be entirely ignored.92 The position of
the Southern Protestants left behind in the Irish Free State was an emotive cause that
was capable of garnering widespread support if properly harnessed. In early 1931 the
Irish government seemed set on a policy of unilateral abolition of the Privy Council.93
The British feared that any such action would garner support for those who argued
that the rights of Irish Protestants were being threatened. An agreed settlement on this
issue might avert the impending crisis. The British government now focused on the
claims made by their Irish counterparts that the Southern Protestant community of the
Irish Free State did not value the Privy Council appeal and would not raise serious
opposition to its abolition.94 If these claims could be verified, an agreed settlement on
the Privy Council appeal might become a real possibility and the threat to the Statute
of Westminster averted.
In early 1931 the British government asked the Irish if evidence could be provided to
support their claims as to Southern Protestant opinion with respect to the Privy
Council appeal. If such evidence could be produced in a form that could be presented
to Parliament, the abolition of the Irish appeal might form part of a wider settlement
on outstanding legal difficulties between the United Kingdom and the Irish Free
92
For example Sir Claude Schuster wrote that Lord Danesfort was “a most stubborn and unreasonable
person and I do not know of anybody who has sufficient skill to see any point of view but his own or to
act reasonably”. TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, C. Schuster to N.M. Butler, 7 November 1930.
93
Dáil Debates, vol. 37, col. 1620-1, 18 March 1931.
94
For example see UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35B/115, Walshe to McGilligan, undated,
NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S6164, Report on meeting between Dulanty and Batterbee, 6 March
1931 and TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, Dominions Secretary to Attorney General, 2 March 1931 and note by
Sir H. Batterbee and Mr. Machtig, 27 February 1931.
23
State.95 The Irish agreed to postpone the introduction of legislation abolishing the
appeal in order to explore the feasibility of this solution.96 This signalled the
beginning of negotiations on a proposed settlement that soon acquired the charming
soubriquet of the “cleaning of the slate” agreement. A wide range of issues was
proposed for inclusion in this draft agreement. These included the settlement of a
territorial dispute between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State over Lough Foyle,
the inter se operation of international conventions between the United Kingdom and
the Irish Free State, the surrender of fugitive offenders, mutual enforcement of
judgments and court orders, the use of the Great Seal, the sealing of probates, Irish
lights, estates of persons of unsound mind, execution of criminal warrants,
maintenance and bastardy orders, repatriation of paupers and matters concerning
cables and wireless facilities.97 However, the dominant issue in the entire “cleaning
of the slate” agreement was always the search for a bilateral agreement on the appeal
to the Privy Council. The fate of the entire agreement was dependent on the Irish
government producing solid evidence that the Southern Protestant community in the
Irish Free State did not desire the continuance of the appeal.
Gauging Protestant Support for the Privy Council Appeal
Given the importance placed on this issue, it is now necessary to examine the level of
support for the Privy Council appeal among Southern Protestants in 1931. There are
formidable obstacles in doing this. The Protestant minority was thinly scattered over
the entire territory of the Irish Free State. The political views of its members were
and remain notoriously difficult to pin down. Many could be accurately described as
“Southern Unionists” while the appellation was inappropriate and even offensive to
others. Southern Protestants were understandably reticent to speak freely to strangers
95
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, CP 120(31), The Irish Free State and Appeals to the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council. See also TNA-PRO, LCO 2/1231, undated memorandum attached to a letter from
Sir Henry Batterbee to Sir Claude Schuster, 21 March 1931 and UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers,
P35/167, undated British communiqué marked “Secret”.
96
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, CP 120(31), The Irish Free State and Appeals to the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council.
97
The draft forms of the proposed agreement can be found in TNA-PRO, LCO 2/1231. An agreement
over the position of the Ulster King at Arms was also suggested during the negotiations on the
“cleaning of the slate” agreement. TNA-PRO, DO 35/127/7 file 4431/9, negotiations with the Irish
Free State, 30 April 1931. A detailed treatment of the proposed “cleaning of the slate” agreement can
be found in Thomas Mohr, The Irish Free State and the Legal Implications of Dominion Status
(unpublished thesis, UCD, 2007) pp. 99-149.
24
on sensitive political questions. A referendum confined to the Protestant community
of the Irish Free State was obviously out of the question. Yet the British were never
so unrealistic as to ask for evidence of this nature. A memorandum drafted by the
Dominions Office that was communicated to the Irish government suggested that “the
position that the Southern Unionists no longer desire the retention of the appeal”
might be illustrated by means of “a resolution in the Dáil or otherwise”.98 This
suggestion assumed that the attitudes of Protestant members of the Dáil, or more
accurately the Protestant members of the Oireachtas given the large representation in
the Seanad, reflected those of the wider Protestant community in the Irish Free State.
Nevertheless, the task of discovering the attitudes of the Protestant members of the
Oireachtas involved asking no more than two dozen individuals. This was not an
unrealistic undertaking and the Irish government already had a head start. The Irish
government had long anticipated the need to provide some form of evidence that there
was no significant support for the Privy Council appeal among the Southern
Protestant community. In late 1930 or early 1931 the Irish government initiated a
quiet process of consulting the Protestant members of the Oireachtas in order to learn
their views on the Privy Council appeal and to search for a means of making these
views clear to the British.
The consultation process was entrusted to two Protestant senators who supported the
policies of the Irish government with respect to the Privy Council. James Douglas
had earned the respect of members of the Irish government through his work with the
White Cross during the War of Independence.99 He was on close terms with Michael
Collins and was a member of the Constitution Committee in 1922. Samuel L. Brown,
a senator and barrister, undertook the bulk of responsibility for this process of
consultation. Brown was assisted by Senator Andrew Jameson at a later stage of the
consultation process. Jameson had been a member of the delegations that had spoken
on behalf of the Southern Protestant community during the negotiations that preceded
the signing of the 1921 Treaty and the enactment of the 1922 Constitution. Brown
and Jameson had formerly been strong supporters of the Privy Council appeal. They
98
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/1231, undated memorandum attached to a letter from Sir Henry Batterbee to Sir
Claude Schuster, 21 March 1931 and UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/167, undated British
communiqué marked “Secret”.
99
J. Anthony Gaughan, Memoirs of Senator James G. Douglas (1887-1954) Concerned Citizen
(Dublin, UCD Press, 1998).
25
had both formed part of a delegation in 1929 that had delivered a formal protest to
W.T. Cosgrave on the government’s policy with respect to the appeal.100 The basis
for the “road to Damascus” travelled by both men over the intervening year is difficult
to trace. The final conclusion of the fiasco surrounding the transferred civil servants101
together with the inefficacy of the Privy Council’s decision in Performing Right
Society v. Bray Urban District Council are likely to have influenced their
conversion.102 Whatever their motivations were, the Irish government’s position that
the minority community was not in need of external safeguards was greatly enhanced
by the support of such individuals. Yet, as Douglas, Brown and Jameson were to
discover, not all of their co-religionists agreed with their conclusions as to the value of
the Privy Council appeal.
In January 1931 Douglas and Brown gave preliminary reports on their assessment of
Protestant opinion in the Oireachtas. Douglas reported “Most of the people, to whom
we are likely to appeal would favour an appeal to the Privy Council in important cases
if this were practical politics”. He added “there is no doubt that in a general way they
mostly disapprove of the government’s policy with regard to appeals”. Douglas
concluded that in his opinion there would be more likelihood of strong opposition to
the introduction of a Bill designed to block an appeal in a particular case, such as had
occurred with respect to Lynham v. Butler, than a general abolition of the appeal by
means of amending Article 66 of the Constitution.103 Senator Brown agreed with
Douglas’ assessment but added the warning that the emergence of future controversies
might radicalise Protestant opinion. Brown noted there was a case currently under
consideration in the Irish courts, Moore v. Attorney General or the “Erne fishery
case”, that showed every sign of forming a future appeal to the Privy Council. This
legal challenge, supported by the State, to property rights held by members of the
Protestant community had the potential to augment support for the appeal. Brown’s
warning proved prophetic and in just over two years the bitter struggle surrounding
100
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, statement of 10 December 1929 attached to letter from Archbishop of
Dublin to Prime Minister, 27 September 1930.
101
Wigg and Cochrane v. The Attorney General of the Irish Free State [1927] I.R. 293 (High Court),
[1925] 1 I.R. 149 (Supreme Court) and [1927] I.R. 285 (Privy Council) and In re Compensation to
Civil Servants under Article X of the Treaty [1929] I.R. 44.
102
[1928] I.R. 506 and [1930] I.R. 509. Senator Brown was broadly supportive of the enactment of the
Copyright (Preservation) Act 1929, which was passed to prevent the appeal in this case. Seanad
Debates, vol. 12. col. 988, 3 July 1929.
103
UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, undated memorandum by Senator James Douglas.
26
the Erne fishery case would prove to be the decisive climax of the entire dispute over
the Privy Council appeal.104
In the spring of 1931 the Irish government entrusted Brown with the task of carrying
out a general consultation with Protestant members of the Oireachtas. His task was to
assess whether they might be prepared to subscribe to a resolution on the question of
Privy Council appeals. The government also gave some thought as to what form such
a resolution might take. It was obvious that passing an official resolution through
both Houses of the Oireachtas would not be a suitable course of action. An official
resolution would have to be tailored to meet the views of the majority of all members
of the Oireachtas rather than the views of its Protestant members. Instead, the
government hoped that a series of informal conferences would see the members of the
“Independent Groups in the Dáil and Senate” pass some form of unofficial resolution.
In June 1931 a group of Independents from both Houses of the Oireachtas had an
informal conference to gauge their views on the Privy Council appeal. A report was
written on the conclusions of this conference that was intended to form the basis of a
final resolution to be passed by Protestant TDs and senators.105
The report began by recognising that “The majority of those present at this conference
are opposed to the abolition of the right of appeal to the Privy Council, and desire that
if possible it should be preserved.” Having made this position clear, those consulted
recognised that the appeal had already been made ineffectual in practice and that the
Independent members of the Oireachtas were powerless to prevent its proposed
abolition by means of legislation. The report went on to recognise the inevitability of
change and, in these circumstances, urged that abolition be brought about through
agreement with the British government in order to avoid the dangers resulting from an
alleged breach of the 1921 Treaty. It concluded with a proposal that the Protestant
members of the Oireachtas should approach the Irish Minister for External Affairs to
urge him to attempt to bring about the proposed change by agreement with Great
Britain. It was made clear that any such resolution would reiterate the point that
majority of the relevant members of the Oireachtas remained opposed to the abolition
of the appeal to the Privy Council in principle. The proposed resolution would add
104
105
UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, undated memorandum by Senator Samuel L. Brown.
UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, memorandum re Privy Council appeals, 17 June 1931.
27
that these representatives felt duty bound to oppose any unilateral legislation seeking
abolition. Nevertheless, these members of the Oireachtas would have expressed their
willingness to accept abolition as a fait accompli in the event of an Anglo Irish
agreement on this matter. If this proved possible, the persons concerned would limit
their criticism in the Oireachtas to “an expression of regret that, in spite of the wishes
of a large section of the Minority on the subject, the Government had not been willing
to continue the right of Appeal to the Privy Council”.106
As events transpired, the proposals enshrined in this proposed resolution were never
initiated. It seems likely that the Irish government was uncomfortable with many
aspects of it. The strong expression of support in principle for the continuance of the
Privy Council appeal was at total variance with the government’s contention that
Southern Protestants placed no value on the appeal. Moreover, the proposed
resolution made it clear that the position of its adherents was based on their
recognition that the appeal had already been rendered ineffective by the Irish
government and also on the basis of their own powerlessness to prevent abolition by
unilateral means. These admissions gave a definite impression of acquiescence under
duress, an impression that would not have been lost upon Unionists at Westminster.
In addition, the strong expression of opposition to unilateral abolition could not have
been comfortable reading to a government that was determined to follow this course
in the absence of bilateral agreement and had already drawn up the legislation
required to bring it into effect.107 However, the final nail in the coffin of the proposal
does not seem to have come from the Irish government but from the Southern
Protestants themselves.
A list of the senators who were consulted by Brown on the Privy Council appeal has
survived. The list includes his own name along with those of Douglas and Jameson.
It also shows that Brown consulted Sir John Griffith, Henry Guinness, The
McGillicuddy, John Bagwell, Arthur Vincent, Sir Edward Biggar and the Countess of
Desart.108 The addition of the last name is interesting because the Countess of Desart
106
Ibid.
NAI Department of Foreign Affairs, 3/1, draft bills.
108
This list has survived in two sources. It was written on the back of the document entitled
“memorandum re Privy Council appeals”, 17 June 1931 and on an envelope containing a letter from
Cosgrave to McGilligan, dated 26 June 1931. The author found both of these when the original
107
28
was not a Protestant but belonged to the Jewish faith. However, the list does
expressly mention that Brown had not consulted two senators, Sir John Keane and
William Barrington. No reason is given for ignoring these two senators but
subsequent events illustrate that Keane was certainly a supporter of the appeal to the
Privy Council. Keane was one of those who objected most strenuously to abolition
when De Valera finally put it into practice in 1933.109 It is possible that Keane’s
views had been radicalised in 1933 by the dispute over the Erne fishery case, as had
been predicted by Brown. Nevertheless, Keane’s omission from the consultation
process is strongly suggestive of a perception that he and Barrington were not seen as
likely supporters of the intended resolution.
Notwithstanding the doubts that might have surrounded Senators Keane and
Barrington, there was certainly strong opposition to the draft resolution among
members of the Dáil. No list of the TDs who were consulted appears to have
survived. Nevertheless, W.T. Cosgrave wrote that three “northern deputies were
violently opposed to the proposal”.110 It is difficult to identify these persons with total
certainty, but it is likely that these were Major James Sproule Myles, John James Cole
and Alexander Haslett. These Southern Protestants were, respectively, TDs for
Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan. Myles was a retired officer from the Royal
Inniskilling Fusiliers and had served as a Unionist MP at Westminster, Cole came
from a Protestant farming background while Haslett, another farmer, had been
endorsed by the Orange Order in the first election of 1927.111 It is possible that the
opposition to the abolition of the appeal extended beyond these three “northern
deputies”. When de Valera sought to abolish the appeal in 1933 his most vocal
opponents in the Dáil were Professor William Edward Thrift and John Good. Thrift
had grown up in England and represented Trinity College Dublin while Good was TD
for Dublin County.
documents were still accessible to members of the public in UCD Archives (at this time they were
archived under McGilligan Papers, P35/196). These files have since been re-organised under the new
reference of McGilligan Papers, P35/166. Public access is now limited to microfilm copies that do not
reproduce these important lists. Archivists take note!
109
Seanad Debates, vol. 17, col. 1681, 31 October 1933.
110
UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, Cosgrave to McGilligan, 26 June 1931.
111
Kurt Bowen, Protestants in a Catholic State – Ireland’s Privileged Minority (Kingston and
Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983), pp. 52-3. See also the database of Oireachtas
members at http://www.oireachtas.ie/members-hist/default.asp?housetype=0 (accessed 6 July 2011).
29
It is uncertain whether the proposed convention of the “Independent Groups in the
Dáil and Senate” might have delivered a majority of Protestant members of the
Oireachtas in favour of the draft resolution on the Privy Council appeal. Even if it
had, the presence of a vocal minority who, in Cosgrave’s own words, were “violently
opposed” even to a limited form of acquiescence is indicative of the strength of
feeling on the Privy Council issue among certain sections of the Protestant
community. It was a situation that was completely at variance with the claims made
by Irish officials to their British counterparts that none of the Southern Protestants in
the Dáil would oppose abolition.112 Even if the proposed resolution had been
acceptable to the Irish government and even if a majority of Protestant members of
the Oireachtas had given it their support, it is possible that the opposition of a
determined minority might have been enough to rally Unionist sympathy at
Westminster.
The failure of the proposed resolution did not mean that the Irish government had
given up on the search for a bilateral settlement. It explored other means of indicating
Protestant acquiescence to the abolition of the Privy Council appeal. The preferred
alternative was to offer the British the testimony of notable Southern Protestants as to
the feelings of their co-religionists in the Irish Free State as a whole. This task fell to
Senators Brown and Jameson who travelled to London in September 1931 and
secured an interview with the Dominions Secretary, James Thomas.
The two Irishmen met the Dominions Secretary on 17 September 1931. Brown and
Jameson were keen to stress the fair treatment of the minority by the Irish
government. The two senators declared that they had no complaints and went as far
as to claim that there was no longer any “religious question” in the Irish Free State.113
Brown and Jameson stated that the Southern Unionists could be divided into three
classes on the specific question of the Privy Council appeal:
112
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, CP 120(31) The Irish Free State and Appeals to the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council.
113
TNA-PRO, DO 35/127/7 file 4431/20, note of interview between Mr. Thomas and Senator Brown
and Senator Jameson, September 1931.
30
(1) there was the class of those who regarded the appeal as futile and an irritant to
good relations between the Protestant minority and the rest of the population of the
Free State, and who, on that ground, were in favour of its immediate abolition;
(2) there was a second class, who, while regretting the disappearance of the appeal,
recognised that the Free State government was committed to securing its abolition,
they thought that it should come by agreement with the United Kingdom government;
(3) there was a third class who was opposed to abolition in any shape or form.
Brown and Jameson admitted the difficulties in gauging the opinions of Protestants
throughout the Irish Free State. Nevertheless, they were prepared to offer their own
estimations of Protestant opinion on the Privy Council appeal. They began by noting
that among “the thinking and educated people” the majority belonged to the first
class. Senator Brown added that this category included members of the governing
body of Trinity College Dublin. Nevertheless, Brown and Jameson were prepared to
concede that a larger proportion of the Southern Protestants probably belonged to the
second class. In their opinion the number belonging to the third class in the Irish Free
State was small and largely confined to the border counties. This claim may have
reflected the position of the three “northern deputies” in the Dáil mentioned by
Cosgrave. Brown and Jameson did note, however, that eruption of controversy in the
near future might arouse old prejudices and have the effect of driving some of the
Southern Protestants out of the second class of opinion and into the third.114
As for opinions within the Oireachtas, the senators stated that of the eleven or twelve
representatives of the minority in the Seanad all belonged to the first class. They
added that of the eleven representatives of the minority in the Dáil, three belonged to
the first class and eight to the second class. Although the two senators might be
expected to be on firmer ground with respect to Protestant opinion in the Oireachtas
than with respect to the Irish Free State as a whole, these figures are open to serious
question. Their claim that Protestant senators were all of the opinion that the Privy
Council appeal was an irritant and should be abolished immediately is particularly
dubious. These views do not reflect the conclusions of the informal consultations
with Protestant members of the Seanad and Dáil in June 1931 that had made it clear
114
Ibid.
31
that a majority favoured the retention of the appeal in ideal circumstances. The lack
of consultation with Senators Keane and Barrington has already been noted. The
figures given with respect to the Dáil are even more questionable. It should be
recalled that the proposed resolution, which would have expressed support for the
appeal while acquiescing in a position of bilateral abolition, was “violently opposed”
by at least three unidentified “northern deputies”.115 The staunch opposition of these
persons surely placed them in the third class of Southern Protestants.
The testimony offered by Brown and Jameson did not result in the anticipated
bilateral agreement that would have paved the way for the abolition of the Privy
Council appeal. The opinions offered by the two senators were not sufficient to
satisfy the criteria suggested by the original British proposal.116 First, the opinions of
the two senators did not constitute evidence that could be shown to those in the United
Kingdom who professed to sympathise with the Protestants of the Irish Free State.
Second, the British government may not have been entirely convinced by their
testimony. Senators Brown and Jameson were among those who saw the appeal as
“futile and an irritant” and as such were, by the admission of their own evidence,
unrepresentative of the majority of Southern Protestants. As shown above, there was
certainly good reason to doubt the accuracy of some of the evidence provided by
them.
There are definite indicators that suggest that Southern Protestant support for the
Privy Council appeal was far more substantial than the Irish government was prepared
to admit. Two major Protestant institutions gave unwavering support to the Privy
Council appeal throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The first was the Irish Times, the
main newspaper read by the minority community, which repeatedly stressed the
importance of the appeal to the minority community and consistently condemned the
efforts of the Irish government to dilute its effectiveness.117 The second was the
115
UCD Archives, McGilligan Paper, P35/166, memorandum re Privy Council appeals, 17 June 1931.
See TNA-PRO, LCO 2/1231, undated memorandum attached to letter from Sir Henry Batterbee to
Sir Claude Schuster, 21 March 1931 and UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, undated British
communiqué marked “Secret”.
117
E.g. see Irish Times, 19 February 1929. The Irish Times condemned the Irish practice of passing ad
hoc legislation to block appeals as a “standing protest against the Free State’s membership of the
British Empire, and a warning to the English people that the Saorstát will secede at the earliest
opportunity”. Irish Times, 11 April 1930.
116
32
Church of Ireland. In late 1929 the Standing Committee of the General Synod of the
Church of Ireland decided to send a delegation to interview President Cosgrave on the
Irish government’s declaration that it intended to seek the abolition of the appeal at
the Imperial Conference of 1930. This delegation included representation from a third
Southern Protestant institution, Trinity College Dublin.
On 10 December 1929 a delegation consisting of the Church of Ireland Archbishop of
Dublin, the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Edward John Gwynn, together with
Senators John Bagwell, Samuel L. Brown and Andrew Jameson met with Cosgrave to
discuss the Privy Council appeal.118 The delegation read out a prepared statement of
protest on behalf of the minority community at the policy of the Irish government
towards the Privy Council appeal. The statement “most respectfully” protested the
policy of the Irish government and made clear that “the minority which we represent
must not be taken as acquiescing therein”.119 Indeed, the deputation sought to
“impress on the President of the Executive Council the fact that there is a feeling of
grave disappointment – we might even say of alarm, on the part of those whom we
represent”.120 The efforts of the delegation to impress the strength of their objections
on Cosgrave were not successful. Cosgrave recounted, almost two years after the
meeting, that the delegation had been resigned to the position that the Privy Council
appeal was bound to be abolished and, consequently, had focused on securing an
enlargement of the Supreme Court as an alternative safeguard.121
Cosgrave’s lapse of memory with respect to the meeting of 10 December 1929 had a
profound influence on the Irish government’s reaction to a letter to the Times written
by the Church of Ireland Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin at the time of the
Imperial Conference of 1930.122 Although the letter did little more than repeat the
concerns raised with Cosgrave the previous year, the Irish government seemed to
regard it as a bolt from the blue. The government refused to consider the letter as a
118
Brown and Jameson had not yet come to the conclusion that the appeal was “futile and an irritant”
at this point.
119
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, statement of 10 December 1929 attached to letter from Archbishop of
Dublin to Prime Minister, 27 September 1930. See Appendix 7.
120
Ibid.
121
NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S4285A, Michael McDunphy to Diarmuid O’Hegarty, 8
November 1930.
122
The Times, 7 November 1930.
33
genuine protest and preferred to regard the Archbishops as proxies in the hands of the
British government.123 This is yet another example of the conspiracy theories that
resulted from the breakdown in relations between the Irish government and the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. In fact, the initiative behind this
intervention came from the Archbishops themselves.124 The British government had
actually considered the Archbishops’ letter to be an unhelpful intervention and had
opposed its publication in the press. 125
The Statute of Westminster
The failure to provide evidence of Southern Protestant consent or acquiescence to the
abolition of the Privy Council appeal undermined the keystone of the “cleaning of the
slate” agreement. By the middle of 1931 the negotiations had petered out. Unilateral
means of abolishing the appeal returned to the forefront of the agenda of the Cumann na
nGaedheal government led by W.T. Cosgrave. Draft legislation to achieve this goal was
prepared and members of the Oireachtas were assured that it would be introduced in the
near future.126 However, the introduction of this legislation was delayed for reasons that
have never been made clear. The most likely explanation for this delay was the need to
avoid disrupting the passage of the Statute of Westminster through the British
parliament in late 1931. The Irish Free State had much to gain from the augmentation of
Dominion autonomy offered by this historic piece of legislation. It was imperative to
avoid rocking the boat on Privy Council appeals during this sensitive period of time.
Those who professed to sympathise with the Protestant community of the Irish Free
State were determined to insert special provisions into the Statute of Westminster Bill to
123
See NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S4285B, Diarmuid O’Hegarty to Michael McDunphy, 7
November 1930 and W.T. Cosgrave to Lord Granard, 8 November 1930.
124
The archbishops wrote to the Dominions Secretary, J.H. Thomas on 27 September 1930 outlining
the arguments that were later used in their letter to The Times. The letter ended with an appeal to
Thomas to resist any proposal to limit what they saw as a constitutional right granted by the Treaty.
TNA-PRO, DO 35/88, 4002/3 and LCO 2/910, Archbishop of Dublin to Prime Minister, 27 September
1930. The British government was given the text of their letter to The Times three days before
publication. TNA-PRO, DO 35/88, 4002/5.
125
TNA-PRO, LCO 2/910, C. Schuster to N.M. Butler, 7 November 1930.
126
Dáil Debates, vol. 37, col. 1620-1, 18 March 1931.
34
ensure the continuance of the Irish appeal to the Privy Council. Lord Danesfort127,
himself a Southern Protestant, introduced an amendment to this effect during the Bill’s
passage through the House of Lords.128 Danesfort was convinced that the Privy Council
was an effective safeguard for Southern Protestants and made it clear that his actions
were motivated by concern for the position of his co-religionists in the Irish Free
State.129 Despite impassioned argument, this proposed amendment never had any real
chance of acceptance. The British government made it clear that amendment of the
agreed text of the Statute of Westminster would never be acceptable to the
Dominions.130 The leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords, Lord
Hailsham131 also stressed that acceptance of the amendment would damage Anglo Irish
relations and would also have wider ramifications throughout the Commonwealth.132
Even Lord Midleton, a leading Southern Unionist who had lobbied for safeguards for the
Protestant community during the negotiations on the 1921 Treaty and the 1922
Constitution, failed to support Danesfort’s initiative. Midleton did not under-estimate
the determination of the Irish government on this issue. He told the House of Lords that
even if the amendment were passed it would prove ineffective, as “We all know that we
are not going by force of arms to reaffirm the right of appeal to the Privy Council”.133
The defeat of the amendment meant that all that Danesfort and his supporters could do
127
John Butcher (1853-1935) Baron Danesfort, of Danesfort in the County of Kerry was the second son
of Samuel Butcher, Bishop of Meath.
128
Danesfort’s amendment would have inserted the following provisions into the Bill: “Without
prejudice to maintenance of the other provisions of the Treaty of sixth December, nineteen hundred and
twenty-one, and of the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922, and of the Irish Free State Constitution
Act 1922, it is hereby declared that nothing in this Act shall be deemed to authorise the Parliament of the
Irish Free State to alter or repeal Section two of the said Treaty or the provisions contained in the Irish
Free State Constitution Act 1922, as to the right of any person to petition His Majesty for leave to grant
such leave.” Hansard, House of Lords, vol. 83, col. 231, 1 December 1931. Danesfort’s amendment
was, in many respects, a poorly drafted provision. The reference to the Articles of Agreement of 1921 as
“the Treaty” was a particularly regrettable given the insistence of successive British governments on the
legal nature of this instrument. Even though British officials, for the sake of convenience often referred
to the agreement reached in 1921 as “the Treaty”, their official position was that it was nothing of the
sort in strict legal terms. For a discussion of this issue see Henry Harrison, Ireland and the British
Empire, 1937 (London, Robert Hale and Co, 1937) pp. 131-170. The reference to the “Supreme Court
of Southern Ireland” was also an unfortunate, if not untypical, error. There was no such legal entity as
“Southern Ireland” in existence in the 1930s.
129
Hansard, House of Lords, vol. 83, col. 232-3, 1 December 1931. Danesfort supported his claim that
the appeal was an effective safeguard by pointing to the final outcome of the appeals concerning the
transferred civil servants. See Wigg and Cochrane v. The Attorney General of the Irish Free State
[1927] I.R. 285 and In re Compensation to Civil Servants under Article X of the Treaty [1929] I.R. 44.
130
This had been recognised at in the report of the Imperial Conference of 1926
131
Douglas McGarel Hogg, Viscount Hailsham (1872–1950) was Lord Chancellor (1928-1929) and
(1935-1938).
132
Hansard, House of Lords, vol. 83, col. 237-41, 1 December 1931.
133
Ibid. at 244.
35
was to call upon the leaders of the Irish government to pause before carrying out a
measure that would be seen as a “gross breach of faith”.134
The Abolition of the Privy Council Appeal
The Statute of Westminster was finally enacted without any major deviation from the
text that had been agreed at the Imperial Conference of 1930. In February 1932 the
Cosgrave government lost a general election in the Irish Free State and was replaced by
a new Fianna Fáil government led by Eamon de Valera. The new administration
promised a programme of constitutional reform that was far more radical than anything
proposed by Cumann na nGaedheal. Ironically, this actually provided the Privy Council
appeal with a short stay of execution. The removal of the controversial parliamentary
oath was the priority issue for new Irish government and this objective was not achieved
until 1933.135 Then and only then, did the Fianna Fáil government introduce the
Constitution (Amendment No. 22) Bill into the Oireachtas, which aimed at abolishing
the appeal to the Privy Council from the Irish courts.
De Valera had hoped that the constitutional amendment abolishing the appeal to the
Privy Council would attract unanimous support in the Oireachtas.136 This hope was
dashed when members of the minority community in the Oireachtas registered strong
protests. Those who spoke against in the constitutional amendment in the Dáil included
Professor William Edward Thrift137 and John Good.138 Sir John Keane spoke against this
measure in the Seanad.139 The most interesting intervention was that of Professor Thrift,
a future Provost of Trinity College Dublin.140 The strength of the intervention of a
relatively passive TD who seldom spoke in the Dáil seemed to take the house by
surprise.141 Thrift was incensed at the policy of successive Irish governments, which
took for granted the support or acquiescence of the minority community with respect to
134
Ibid. at 243.
Constitution (Removal of Oath) Act 1933.
136
Dáil Debates vol. 17, col. 2116, 4 October 1933.
137
TD for Dublin University.
138
TD for Dublin County.
139
Dáil Debates vol. 17, 1681, 31 October 1933.
140
Thrift was Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy (1901-1929) and Vice-Provost (19351937). He was a TD for Trinity College Dublin (1922-1937) before he became the Provost of that
university (1937-1942).
141
Irish Times, 13 October 1933.
135
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opposition to the Privy Council. Thrift insisted that protests had been registered on
every occasion on which the Irish appeal to the Privy Council had been attacked.142 He
objected to the final abolition of the appeal on the basis that it had been part of a bargain
concluded between the majority and minority communities that underpinned the
foundation of the Irish Free State.143 Thrift emphasised that the Privy Council appeal
had been one of a number of vital concessions that had won the acquiescence of
Southern Protestants to the conclusion of the 1921 Treaty. He concluded that the
minority community had honourably maintained its side of the bargain and that integrity
of the majority community was now in doubt:
“When concessions are made in a bond it is not an honest way of dealing with that
bond immediately to set yourself out to remove from the bargain- because you
have the power- anything that you do not like in that bargain. That is not the way I
understand such a bargain at any rate...Whittle away this concession and every
other concession until you get the Treaty to the form in which you want it and
what chance have you of making any bargain in the future with those who disagree
with you.”144
De Valera flatly denied the existence of the bargain asserted by Thrift. Arguments based
on a betrayal of trust that were founded on the conclusion of the 1921 Treaty left him
unmoved.145
The Irish government was far more concerned with opposition from a completely
different quarter. The Privy Council granted leave to appeal the decision of the Irish
Supreme Court in Moore v. Attorney General while Constitution (Amendment No. 22)
Bill was being debated in the Oireachtas. This appeal would give the Privy Council the
opportunity to pass judgment on its own abolition with respect to the Irish Free State and
on all the other constitutional amendments aimed at dismantling the settlement imposed
142
Dáil Debates, vol. 49, col. 2389, 12 October 1933.
Dáil Debates, vol. 49, col. 2389-90, 12 October 1933. Thrift made a similar argument during the
debates on the Constitution (Removal of Oath) Act 1933. Dáil Debates, vol. 41, col. 922-33, 29 April
1932
144
Dáil Debates, vol. 49, col. 2389-90, 12 October 1933.
145
Dáil Debates vol. 49, col. 2392, 12 October 1933.
143
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by the 1921 Treaty.146 The Irish government attempted to prevent this by introducing
the last in a long line of efforts to block Irish appeals to the Privy Council. This took the
form of making the abolition of the Privy Council appeal retrospective in effect in the
final text of the Constitution (Amendment No. 22) Act 1933.147 The determination of
the Privy Council to consider the appeal in defiance of these actions made it clear that
the long running dispute over Irish appeals still had at least one more round to run.
The decision of the Privy Council in Moore v. Attorney General was finally delivered in
1935. The Judicial Committee unexpectedly upheld the validity of its own abolition in
relation to the Irish Free State. The substance of the decision of the Privy Council was
summarised in a single sentence:
“The simplest way of stating the situation is to say that the Statute of Westminster
gave to the Irish Free State a power under which they could abrogate the Treaty,
and that, as a matter of law, they have availed themselves of that power.”148
This surprising decision seemed to refute critics of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council in the Irish Free State who questioned the objectivity of this court.
Nevertheless, to many observers the abolition of the appeal and its confirmation by the
Privy Council itself cut the final bonds between the United Kingdom and the Protestants
of the Irish Free State. Ronald Ross, an Ulster Unionist MP, expressed his dismay that
the Protestants who had decided to stay and keep their property in the Irish Free State on
the basis of certain safeguards were “now at the mercy of the courts of that country
146
At this point these included Constitution (Removal of Oath) Act 1933, Constitution (Amendment
No. 20) Act 1933, Constitution (Amendment No. 21) Act 1933, Constitution (Amendment No. 22) Act
1933.
147
Section 2 provides “The amendments made in this Act in Article 66 of the Constitution shall, in
relation to judgements and orders pronounced or made by the Supreme Court before the passing of this
Act apply and have effect in regard to the institution and prosecution, after the passing of this Act of an
appeal or a petition for leave to appeal from any judgement or order and to the further proceeding after
the passing of this Act of an appeal or a petition for leave to appeal from any judgement or order which
was instituted before such passing.”
148
Per Sankey L.C., [1935] I.R. 472 at 486- 487 and [1935] A.C. 484 at 499. This judgment was based
on the assertion that the Irish 1922 Constitution had been created by the Irish Free State Constitution
Act 1922, an Imperial statute passed at Westminster. The enactment of the Statute of Westminster had
removed any fetters that might have placed on the Irish Free State in terms of amending Imperial
legislation. This meant that the Oireachtas was capable of removing the provisions of the 1922 Act that
demanded that all Irish laws be compatible with the 1921 Treaty. This had purportedly been done by
means of the Constitution (Removal of Oath) Act 1933. Consequently, the Oireachtas was also capable
of abolishing the appeal to the Privy Council under Constitution (Amendment No. 22) Act 1922
notwithstanding questions of compatibility with the provisions of the 1921 Treaty.
38
without appeal”.149 It is important to emphasise that suspicions as to the objectivity of
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council expressed by Irish Nationalists were
matched by expressions of distrust by Unionists as to the objectivity of the courts of the
Irish Free State.150 Yet, the dismay of Unionists at Westminster at the demise of the
Irish appeal to the Privy Council seems to reflect deeper concerns. The United Kingdom
was seen as having a special duty in maintaining the rights of the minority community.
This responsibility was seen as important in maintaining a direct link between the
United Kingdom and this minority community. This link was now seen having been
severed as a result of careless concessions granted to the Irish Free State by the Statute
of Westminster that had been pushed through by a British government whose priorities
did not include protecting the interests of the Protestants of the Irish Free State.151 If the
term “ex-Unionists” was not an accurate description of the views of Southern Protestants
in 1935 there was now little to prevent it from becoming increasingly accurate in the
future.
Conclusion
The institution of the Seanad, university representation in the Dáil and the appeal to
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council were all perceived as safeguards for the
Southern Protestant minority. By the middle of 1936 all these institutions had been
removed from the Constitution of the Irish Free State.152 The provisions of Article 8
of the 1922 Constitution153 and the proportional representation voting system were left
as isolated survivors of the undertakings that had been given to the Southern
Protestant minority in the early 1920s.154 These developments led to predictable
149
Hansard, House of Commons, vol. 303, col. 639-640, 20 June 1935.
E.g. see A.B. Keith, The Constitutional Law of the British Dominions (London, MacMillan, 1933),
p. 271-2.
151
The British government had insisted in 1931 that the enactment of the Statute of Westminster would
not permit the Irish Free State to dismantle the Treaty. For example, Stanley Baldwin told the House of
Commons “I am advised by the Law Officers of the Crown that the binding character of the Articles of
Agreement will not be altered by one jot or tittle by the passing of the Statute.” Hansard, House of
Commons, vol. 260, col. 344, 24 November 1931. These words came back to haunt Baldwin in the
aftermath of the Privy Council’s decision in Moore v. Attorney General. Hansard, House of
Commons, vol. 304, col. 439-47, 10 July 1935.
152
Constitution (Amendment No. 24) Act 1936 Constitution (Amendment No. 23) Act 1936,
Constitution (Amendment No. 22) Act 1933.
153
Later substantially reproduced in Article 44 of the Irish Constitution of 1937.
154
Even proportional representation was threatened with replacement in referenda held in 1959 and
1968. It survived these challenges and has emerged intact into the twenty-first century
150
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accusations of “betrayal” of at Westminster. This can be seen in the context of the
abolition of the Privy Council appeal in 1933, which provoked Edward Carson, in one
of his last speeches to the House of Lords, to deliver a political swansong resonant
with unleavened bitterness:
“All I can say … is that every single promise we have made to the loyalists of
Ireland has been broken, that every pledge of law and order has been destroyed,
that everything that makes life and property safe has gone and now the last
remnant is to be taken away.”155
What conclusions can be drawn as to the relationship between the Protestants of the
Irish Free State and the Privy Council appeal? As has already been noted, the
political views of this community remain notoriously difficult to pin down. Even
persons who were themselves members of that community admitted the difficulties of
gauging the overall opinion of their co-religionists.156 Nevertheless, it is clear that
most Protestant members of the Oireachtas disapproved of the Irish government’s
actions in blocking Privy Council appeals. This is evident from the informal
consultations that took place in 1931. Senators Douglas and Brown warned of the
danger of radicalising Protestant opinion if this policy was maintained, as it was with
respect to the appeal in Moore v. Attorney General.157
More importantly, it is clear that the extent and depth of Southern Protestant support
for the appeal to the Privy Council from the Irish courts was consistently
underestimated throughout the lifetime of that appeal. This consideration is evident in
the flawed analysis of the opinions of Protestant members of the Oireachtas that was
presented to the British government by Senators Brown and Jameson in 1931. The
views of the delegation that visited W.T. Cosgrave in 1929 to protest the policy of his
government with respect to the appeal proved to be words written on water. The letter
written to the press by the Church of Ireland Archbishops in 1930 was written off as a
155
Hansard, House of Lords, vol. 90, col. 335, 6 December 1933.
Senators Brown and Jameson admitted this in their interview with J.H. Thomas on 17 September
1931. TNA-PRO, DO 35/127/7 file 4431/20, note of interview between Mr. Thomas and Senator
Brown and Senator Jameson, September 1931.
157
UCD Archives, McGilligan Papers, P35/166, undated memoranda by Senators James Douglas and
Samuel L. Brown.
156
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ploy by proxies of a devious British government. The consistent stance of the Irish
Times seems to have made little impact outside the readership of that newspaper.
The constant underestimation of support for the Privy Council appeal among the
Southern Protestant community did come at a price. It was this consideration that led
to the failure of the proposed resolution that was intended to show that Protestant
members of the Oireachtas did not value the appeal, which, in turn, doomed the
proposed “cleaning of the slate” agreement. The same underestimation of support led
Eamon de Valera to voice his expectation that abolition of the appeal would be passed
by universal acclaim when the necessary legislation was finally presented to the
Oireachtas.158 De Valera seemed genuinely surprised when embarrassing voices of
opposition from the Southern Protestant community were raised.
All these considerations should cause the historian to hesitate before echoing the
position asserted by representatives of Irish governments, who were by no means
disinterested parties, and concluding that opposition to the abolition of the Privy
Council appeal in the 1930s only came from “a tiny vociferous, proportion of former
Unionists”.159 Nor is it safe to dismiss a position that was supported by the majority
of the Southern Protestants at Westminster, by a significant number of Protestant
members of the Oireachtas, by the Irish Times as the major newspaper of the minority
community, by three successive Provosts of Trinity College Dublin160 and by the
leaders of the Church of Ireland as the viewpoint of “cranks” or “a handful of
extremists”.161
The attitude of the population of the Irish Free State to the Privy Council appeal as a
whole is not open to dispute. There can be little doubt that the majority saw the
appeal as a serious attack on national dignity and national sovereignty. On a similar
theme, few people in living in the inter-war years would have disputed that relations
between the majority and minority communities were far healthier in the Irish Free
State than in neighbouring Northern Ireland. Yet, equally few have been able to
158
Dáil Debates vol. 17, col. 2116, 4 October 1933.
David B. Swinfen, Imperial Appeal (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 124.
160
John Henry Bernard (1919-1927), Edward John Gwynn (1927-1937) and William Edward Thrift
(1937-1942).
161
TNA-PRO, DO 35/127/7 Granard to Thomas, 20 August 1931 and The Star, May 1931, p. 207.
159
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endorse McGilligan’s claim that Irish Catholics had “never been guilty of religious
intolerance”.162 De Valera’s belief that “this country knows nothing about religious
persecution and intolerance” can be placed at the same level of hyperbole.163
Confident assertions by successive Irish governments that the overwhelming majority
of “Ex-Unionists” rejected the need for an appeal to an external court supported the
convenient conclusion that there was no real “minority community” in the Irish Free
State.
The ability of Irish ministers to “look into the hearts” of Southern Protestants and so
glean their political opinions was matched by a determination to abolish the Privy
Council appeal even if, contrary to their divination, a majority of Southern Protestants
turned out to be opposed to this course of action. W.T. Cosgrave deplored the
contention that “a minority of 7½ per cent should be entitled to prevent the wishes of
the remaining 92½ from being realised” with respect to the Privy Council appeal.164
In 1933 the abolition of the appeal was opposed in the Oireachtas on the basis that it
violated an unwritten “bargain” between the majority and minority communities that
underpinned the foundation of the State. Eamon de Valera responded in
uncompromising terms:
“If there are any bargains standing in the way of the sovereignty of our people
they have got to go. That is our attitude at any rate, and that is the spirit in
which I move that the Bill [to abolish the Privy Council appeal] do now
pass”.165
Over seven decades have passed since the abolition of the Irish appeal to the Privy
Council. Today, Irish citizens can access a number of external tribunals in order to
assert their rights. These include the European Court of Justice and the European
Court of Human Rights. Yet, it is important to examine the history of the Irish appeal
in the context of the early twentieth century and not that of the early twenty first
century. The circumstances in which the self-governing Irish State was created,
162
NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S4285B, transcript of radio broadcast of 9 November 1930.
NAI, Department of Foreign Affairs, 3/1. De Valera wrote this in a draft speech that was intended
to accompany the introduction of the Bill designed to abolish the Privy Council appeal in 1933.
164
NAI, Department of the Taoiseach S4285B, Cosgrave to Granard, 8 November 1930.
165
Dáil Debates vol. 49, col. 2392, 12 October 1933.
163
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together with the limitations on key areas of sovereignty that remained after 1922, did
not create favourable conditions for the toleration of an external tribunal sitting in
London. The appeal was seen as having been imposed on the Irish Free State by
stealth and serious doubts as to the objectivity of this court gained wide currency in
Irish political circles. The Irish Free State was far from unique in inter-war Europe in
witnessing a conflict between assertions of national sovereignty and demands for the
protection of the rights of vulnerable minorities. This article is not intended to pass
judgment on this conflict and its final resolution. Its only purpose is to illustrate the
existence of this conflict. This is necessary because its significance has, in the past,
been dismissed without detailed investigation or, far more commonly, been ignored
completely.
It is important to remember that the “disappearance of Britain”, the theme of this
special volume of the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, first manifested itself in the
secession of much of the island of Ireland from the United Kingdom. Many of those
who had opposed this process opted to leave the 26 counties after 1922. For those
who shared this political perspective, yet opted to remain in the new Irish Free State,
the appeal to a court in London represented a real link with a United Kingdom from
which they were now excluded. It is also important to recognise that a substantial
portion of the population of the Irish Free State did feel uneasy and vulnerable in this
new and untested entity. One or both of these considerations ensured that a
substantial number, perhaps even a majority, of Southern Protestants did value an
appeal to an external tribunal in order to uphold their rights in the last resort. The
protests that accompanied the removal of this appeal indicate that these considerations
remained relevant more than a decade after the creation of the State. If firmer
foundations in cross-community relations were gradually established in the decades
that followed, and few would deny that they have, it is important that this
achievement should not be taken for granted or dismissed as being in some way
inevitable.
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